Finance Yorkshire expands Equity Linked Finance team

Left to right: Darren Morris, Anne Salisbury, Andrew Burton, Nicola Galvin and Ian Brown with Alex McWhirter, Chief Executive of Finance Yorkshire.

Finance Yorkshire has welcomed five new faces to its Equity Linked Finance team.

Anne Salisbury, Ian Brown, Darren Morris and Nicola Galvin have all joined Finance Yorkshire, along with Andrew Burton who will be heading up the Equity Linked team.

The Equity Linked team’s new Business Development Manager Anne Salisbury is a previous Ambassador at Yorkshire Association of Business Angels (YABA), who also has banking experience with HSBC. She has worked with SMEs across the region since 2000 and is a high-profile figure in the West Yorkshire professional community.

New Portfolio Manager Ian Brown is a private equity director who has operated at board level across a number of different industries and brings with him company turnaround, acquisitions and corporate sales skills.

Contract Manager Darren Morris joins Finance Yorkshire with a wealth of experience helping companies get investment-ready, particularly those in the IT sector, and Nicola Galvin has joined as Finance Manager

Heading up the team is Investment Director Andrew Burton, well-known across Yorkshire and the Humber as YABA Chairman and manager of the Viking Fund. He has many years of experience managing investment portfolios and running co-investment funds and has a keen interest in manufacturing and technology companies.

Andrew said: “The newly enhanced equity team is on the lookout for growth companies in a wide range of sectors - including manufacturing, food and drink, creative and digital and sport - that have a gap in growth capital, capital expenditure or working capital funding.

“Our Equity Linked Finance fund does not take a majority shareholding in any investee company so owners can be assured we never seek to control the business.”

The four new additions join the existing team of Investment Director Ash Chopra, Investment Manager Mark Johnson and Investment Executive Katharine Braim.

The Equity Linked Finance fund is flexible and, as well as providing equity investment, also offers a mix of debt/mezzanine finance.

Finance Yorkshire provides seedcorn, loan and equity linked investments, ranging from £15,000 to £2m to help a range of small and medium sized businesses to meet their funding requirements for growth and development.

The project is supported financially by the European Union. It has attracted £30million investment from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of Europe’s support for the region’s economic development through the Yorkshire and Humber ERDF Programme, £15million from Yorkshire Forward’s Single Programme, and £45million match funding from the European Investment Bank.

For more information about Finance Yorkshire, please visit www.finance-yorkshire.com or ring
0845 649 0000.

Note: this news article is from Finance Yorkshire’s previous fund. Read more about Finance Yorkshire